Contents

Overview

This release provides the first time a common build procedure for windows and *unix systems. Additionaly the use of the GPS system of ACT.com has been taken into account, which means for each component a gps project files has been created.

Features of the Release:

• An extensive thin Ada 95 binding to the ODBC interfaces.
• ISO/92 compliant embedded SQL translator which is able to process Ada 95 packages and files containing only one procedure. The translator creates Ada 95 source files working on top the of the ODBC interface.
• Installation support for some commonly known data base products (see below).
• Documentation in HTML, Postscript and PDF format.
• Native Ada 95 bindings for MySQL, PostgreSQL and the Oracle call interface
• GNU specific include clause which allows to access the ODBC handles via embedded SQL. This allows to mix embedded SQL and low level ODBC programing in a single source (see chapter in documentation).
• DECLARE TABLE construct may be used to generate parts of the schema files (-schema option).
• Support of embedded SQL based on the ISO/92 standard.
• Support of MySQL with MS ODBC Drivers on Windows 95
• Unicode support on the ODBC interface.
• The connection clause has been extended by the ON clause in order to intercept typical connection errors and to define a reaction on ESQL level as shown below: CONNECT [ ON [COMMUNICATION|AUTHORIZATION|OTHER] ERROR [RAISE|GOTO|DO] <target> ]
• A new GNADE implemenation defined data types as VARCHAR and VARBINARY. For details please refere to the documentation and the example attachment.gpq in samples/esql.
• The esql translator contains a small scale variable substituation which makes gnatprep not nessesary for simple substitution jobs.
• The experimental Ada Database Connectivity (ADBC) - API. The idea of this interface is to provide a binding which makes application relativly independant of the unterlying data base. The interface is highly experimental (refer to http://gnade.sourceforge.net/ado.html)
• A set of command line tools including import/export tools (see documentation).
• Experimental SQLite Bindings

This release of the GNADE project is intended for building with GNAT (the GNU Ada compiler) on the platforms Linux, Solaris and Windows NT/95/2000.

Legal Stuff

License and Copyright

The GNU Public License (GPL) applies with the following extension to all components of this release

As a special exception, if other files instantiate generics from GNADE Ada units, or you link GNADE Ada units or libraries with other files to produce an executable, these units or libraries do not by itself cause the resulting executable to be covered by the GNU General Public License. This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why the executable file might be covered by the GNU Public License.

The documentation has been put under the Free GNU Documentation License.

Authors

The authors and copyright holders of the GNADE project are:

Contributions

Special regards to the following persons which have contributed to the project:

Contact

New Features

Note 1- If okg-config is found on a system, the systemwide installation script will install the package descriptor in the path which is given in the file etc/config.site:

site_pkgconfig_path=<your path>

If nothing is given /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig is assumed.

Supported ODBC and Database Products

Even the GNADE project except for the native data base bindings is expected to work with all ODBC compliant data base products. The following products are known to work with GNADE assuming, that you are using the correct driver manager.

The GNADE project installation procedure provides for theses product test data bases. If your data base is not listed below, the GNADE project will be very likely usable but the test data base has to be installed manually.

The following Driver Managerare known to work with this and/or previous releases:

The iODBC 3.04 implementation on Solaris seems to have a problem with the handling of cursor states. It should not be used.

Supported native bindings

Other Components

Beside of the ODBC and the native bindings, the project provides add on components as:

• ADBC- Ada Database Connectivitiy
• Contributed tools

ADBC

The ADBC interface is a highly experimental package which works on top of PostgreSQL and MySQL. Since the interface is completly unstable it is not recommentded to use this interface in application at the current point in time. Since the interest in the Ada community was quite low it is questionable whether the development of this interface will be continued.

Contributed Tools

Tools are not part of this release. Constributed code is released as separate packages since they do not depend on a certain version of the GNADE environment.

• gsql - A SQL client

Supported Platforms / Compilers

Problems

This section contain an overview of known, fixed problems and restrictions (limitations). Please report all errors via the error report system at the source forge project page.

Fixed Problems

Problems reported earlier then 1.2.0 are listed in the release note 1.4.0

Known Problems

Restrictions

• The package names of the OCI binding are not yet lined up with the GNADE package hirarchy. This allignment will be done with the next versions. The build process currently creates no test client automatically since the build scripts are only available for windows
• The VARBINARY data type has only been tested with Mimer SQL.
• The configuration procedure for Solaris has not been tested completely. If it fails please use the Makefiles in the directory ./win32. These files are known to build a working installation under Solaris.
• The Object Ada Compiler is known to fail compiling the ODBC bindings because of insufficient compliance to the Ada 95 RM.
• The compilation of the ODBC bindings is known to fail on a Sun SPARC using GNAT 3.13p (ACT tracking number [8925-002] Gigi abort code 411 on SPARC architectures). This has been fixed mean while but all tests have been done with GNAT 3.14p.
• The Option -compiler has been added to allow the support of specific of different Ada 95 compilers which has currently no effect.
• Unicode support is only available begining with UnixODBC version 2.0. The Uncode support does depend on GNAT specific packages
• Oracle 8i requires the declaration of string hostvariable to be 1 character larger then the domain size, e.g. assuming the size of the domain Ename from the example simple to be 20, the host variables have to be defined as:

  Ename     :   Char (1..21); 
  Dept_Name :   Char (1..21); 
  Location  :   Char (1..21);

• The automatic installation is not supported in case of Oracle 8i but the installation script is located under samples.

Installation

The GNADE code and the documentation is distributed in the following files:

The installation of this software requires the following components:

Installation on Linux/Unix

Unpacking and Configuration

$ gunzip -c gnade-src-<version>.tar.gz | tar xvf -
$ cd gnade-src-<version>
$ ./configure [ --sampledb=<rdbms> [ native(s) ]

This allows you to specify for which RDBMS product you wish to create a sample data bases and for which RDBMS products you wish to build native bindings. If nothing is given only the ODBC based parts will be build.

The following RDBMS prducts are supported.

• mimer - MimerSQL
• postgres - PostgreSQL
• mysql - MySQL
• oracle - Oracle 8i lite

If the value is omitted because your data base product is not listed,, all subsequent steps regarding the data base installation may be skipped and you have to install the test database manually.

Installation of the Database

Depending on the installation of the data base you have specified in the configure script command, you have to execute the following step either by using a DBA account our you may use your own user account

$ su ..dba..
$ gmake createuser

After the database and the database user has been configured, the ODBC interface has to be configured. The directory ./samples/sample_db contains sample files for the unixODBC driver manager. The files odbc.ini.sample odbcinst.ini.sample have to be copied to /etc/odbc.ini and /etc/odbcinst.ini.sample.

Compiling an testing

After the creation of the data base user, the final build may be done by:

$ gmake

Test code is located in the directory ./samples. In order to test the functionality of the ODBC interface use the examples in ./odbc or ./esql.

Systemwide Installation

In order to install the build products on your system login as root and execute the following command in the installation directory of this package:

make install

The makefile will run a script which installs all components on your system that they are available to other users as well. The target directories are specified in the etc/site.config file.

In case of upgrading from 1.4.1 to a higer version please perform the following steps prio to the installation of the package:

cd /usr/lib ; rm libgnade*

cd /usr/bin; rm gesql gnade-config

cd /usr/lib/ada; rm -rf gnade

or if you have installed the rpm package, simply run:

rpm -e <gnade-package>

Include the new location of the GNADE environment both in the PATH variable and in the loader configuration:

In /etc/profile.local add

PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/gnade/bin ; export PATH

In/etc/ld.so.confadd the line /usr/local/gnade/lib and execute

ldconfig -v

Installation of the RPM packages

The installation of the executable package done by executing the following command:

rpm -ivh gnade-1.4.0-4.i686.rpm.

This will install the production results at the following places in the filesystem:

libraries - /usr/lib/libgnade*
documentation - /usr/share/doc/gnade-1.4.0
binaries - /usr/bin

Since this is the first rpm release no deinstallation has to be done.

Contrib Tool Installation

The GNADE project provides tools which are add on packages to the GNADE source packages. The following tools are installable with this distribution:

• GSQL Version 0.7 or greater

For the installation please follow the procedure below after you have installed the GNADE source release.

• change into the contrib directory
• gunzip -c file.tar.gz | tar xvf -
• Add the previously created directory to the file packages in the contrib directory
• make

In order to install the tool run as root in the installation directory of GNADE the command:

make install

Since the installation procedure installs also the GNADE release ensure that the current status is usable for systemwide installation.

If it does not work

If this installation procedure fails you may use the Makefile in the directory ./win32. This will require some manual adoptions but it is a starting point.

In any case if you encounter a problem please contact the GNADE team asap.

Installation on Windows NT

For window users a zip file is provided. In order to install perform the following steps:

> unzip gnade-src-<version>.zip
> cd gnade-src-<version>/win32
> make 

Please note, this works with or without Cygwin installed.

Note that the Windows distribution of GNAT is in two parts; the standard GNAT tools in gnat-3.14p-nt.exe and the extra Windows tools and libraries in gnatwin-3.14p.exe. Both must be installed.

$Id: note_1.5.1.html,v 1.3 2004/03/09 12:59:17 merdmann Exp $